Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Running in the Family, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Memory, History, and Story
Alcoholism
Ancestry, Homeland, and Identity
Irresponsibility in the 1920s
Colonialism
Summary
Analysis
Ondaatje remarks that the early 1920s were a “busy and expensive time” for his grandparents. During this period, they live mostly in Colombo, but in the hot months take their family up to the highlands in Nuwara Eliya for a month or so of parties, horse races, tennis, and golf. All the wealthy families while away the months here. There is the occasional “casual tragedy” such as someone dying in a hunting accident, but no one takes much notice. This goes on through the 1920s and 1930s.
Not only Ondaatje’s parents, but even his grandparents, live in a state of constant partying, celebration, and leisure. This suggests that the irresponsibility and frivolity of the 1920s is fostered in Mervyn and Doris’s generation by their well-off parents, and they are spurred on to such behavior by the general wealth and luxury around them.
Themes
The families at Nuwara Eliya are a mix of Sinhalese, Tamil, Dutch, British, and Burgher ancestry. There is a rift between these families and the white Europeans, who keep themselves separate and whom everyone assumes are “snobs and racists.” Ondaatje’s grandfather Philip has a famous collection of wine glasses. His other grandfather, Willie Gratiaen, dreams of snakes. Ondaatje’s grandmother Lalla once told the family that the 1920s were so “whimsical” that everyone was “always tired.”
The general belief that Europeans are racists indicates that tension exists between the foreigners and the native population, even though the native population is full of mixed heritage. This mixture of European and Ceylonese ancestry will resurface as a point of conflict in Ondaatje’s understanding of his own identity.
Themes
